[LINK] Learning without practice, through fMRI induction

maia

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=122523&org=NSF&from=news
From the article:

New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise.

Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.

Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.

EDIT: To clarify, this is almost certainly over-hyped. However, it appears to at least be an instance of very interesting biofeedback.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=122523&org=NSF&from=news
From the article:

New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise.

Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.

Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.

EDIT: To clarify, this is almost certainly over-hyped. However, it appears to at least be an instance of very interesting biofeedback.

Right now I can't watch the video or read the original article, but the comparison of this to Matrix-style instant learning downloaded into your brain appears to be ridiculous hype. After looking through dozens of articles repeating the original press release without providing any details, I finally found this description of how it works. You use biofeedback to adjust your brain state, and then for a while afterwards you can discriminate specific visual textures more efficiently. That's it. So it's another example of neurohype.

I still find it interesting, though. Biofeedback seems like very powerful stuff, though clearly not as crazy as the hype makes it out to be.